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Hand Spinning and Cotton in the Aztec Empire, As Revealed by the Codex Mendoza

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Hand Spinning and Cotton in the Aztec Empire, As Revealed by the Codex Mendoza University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings Textile Society of America 2002 Hand Spinning and Cotton in the Aztec Empire, as Revealed by the Codex Mendoza Susan M. Strawn Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf Part of the Art and Design Commons Strawn, Susan M., "Hand Spinning and Cotton in the Aztec Empire, as Revealed by the Codex Mendoza" (2002). Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings. 420. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/420 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Textile Society of America at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Hand Spinning and Cotton in the Aztec Empire, as Revealed by the Codex Mendoza Susan M. Strawn At a lecture titled “Growing Up Aztec,” art historian Jill Furst illustrated Aztec childhood with images from the Codex Mendoza, an extraordinary, post- Hispanic pictorial manuscript from central Mexico. The Mendoza specified the lessons, punishments, and even the number of tortillas appropriate for boys and girls during each year of childhood. Interestingly, the Codex Mendoza showed spinning as the only instruction given to Aztec girls between the ages of four and thirteen years. In 1992, the University of California Press published a full color facsimile of the Codex Mendoza1 with a translation into English and with extensive interpretation in four volumes edited by Frances F. Berdan and Patricia Rieff Anawalt. Following the editors’ dedication to those interested in studying MesoAmerica (“May you find a good road”), I read the Codex Mendoza for references and images specific to spinning, spinners, and cotton fiber. The work of Berdan and Anawalt made it possible to look at Aztec history from within the craft of hand spinning. Questions about the Aztecs and spinning included: Why did the Codex Mendoza show that learning to spin was the only instruction given to little girls aged four to thirteen? Little boys learned a variety of skills. Preparing enough fiber and spinning enough yarn for a garment using a spindle takes considerable time, but did it require educating presumably half the Aztec population only in spinning? What else might the Codex Mendoza reveal about the place of hand spinning in everyday Aztec life? What roles the spinner play and what fibers did they spin? After a brief description of the original Codex Mendoza and the facsimile edition, this paper describes spinning, spinners, and cotton as revealed by the Codex Mendoza and suggests one connection between quantities of handspun cotton and female childhoods devoted to learning hand spinning. The Codex Mendoza The original Codex Mendoza has a colorful history. Anthropologist H. B. Nicholson has studied the Mendoza, the complex and ambiguous circumstances of its preparation, and the history of its travels among subsequent owners before it came to reside at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, England. Evidence indicates the Mendoza was prepared at the request of Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza in Mexico City in the 1540s, some 20 years after Spanish conquest.2 1 Frances F. Berdan, and Patricia R. Anawalt, eds., The Codex Mendoza (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992). 2 H. B. Nicholson, “The History of the Codex Mendoza,” in The Codex Mendoza, ed. Frances F. Berdan and Patricia R. Anawalt, vol. 1 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1992), 2-10. The Codex Mendoza is a European format book on sixteenth-century, Spanish paper with typical European watermark designs.3 It contains both pictorial glyphs and Spanish commentary. An indigenous scribe or scribes painted glyphs onto its seventy-two pictorial pages using indigenous pictorial styles for a European patron who selected the content. This made the book a “hybrid, a European commission grafted onto an indigenous tradition.”4 Scribes were craftsmen, probably sons of the nobility, trained by priests to paint the form of conventional pictorial glyphs, including representations of place and personal names, events and activities, calendar and number values, and various objects. Pictorial glyphs served as mnemonic reminders for stories embedded in Aztec oral traditions.5 Spanish annotators added the sixty-three pages of commentary written in Spanish. The Mendoza consists of three sections, each with different categories of information. Part 1 establishes the power of Aztec rulers with a chronicle of their victories. Part 2 lists tribute paid to Aztec rulers by conquered regions. Part 3 describes various aspects of everyday Aztec life. Pictorial styles indicate that parts 1 and 2 were copied from a pre-Conquest manuscript but that part 3 was original to the Mendoza.6 Scribes allowed space around the pictorial glyphs for descriptive Spanish annotations. On some folios, the Spanish annotator apologizes for the crudeness of his hurried writing, which he blames on the slowness of the scribes.7 The Codex Mendoza was prepared for the Spanish crown. Evidence indicates that French pirates intercepted the ship that carried it to Spain. Its ownership after that has been traced to France and then to England where, by 1659, the book had entered into the collection of the Bodleian Library.8 The first complete photo reproduction of the Codex Mendoza was the 1938 John Cooper Clark edition, which was published in London and included an English translation and interpretation. Tragically, nearly all those volumes were destroyed during the London Blitz of World War II.9 3 Wayne Ruwet, “A Physical Description of the Codex Mendoza,” in The Codex Mendoza, ed. Frances F. Berdan and Patricia R. Anawalt, vol. 1 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1992), 13. 4 Kathleen S. Howe, “The Relationship of Indigenous and European Styles in the Codex Mendoza: An Analysis of Pictorial Style.” in The Codex Mendoza, ed. Frances F. Berdan and Patricia R. Anawalt, vol. 1 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1992), 25. 5 Frances F. Berdan. “Glyphic Conventions of the Codex Mendoza,” in The Codex Mendoza, ed. Frances F. Berdan and Patricia R. Anawalt, vol. 1 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1992), 93-98. 6 Howe, 31. 7 Frances F. Berdan. “The Imperial Tribute Roll of the Codex Mendoza,” in The Codex Mendoza, ed. Frances F. Berdan and Patricia R. Anawalt, vol. 1 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1992), 55. 8 Nicholson, 7-10. 9 Nicholson, 1. The Aztecs The Aztecs were descendents of hunting and gathering groups that began their migration from the northern deserts about A.D.1168 and had built their powerful empire in the Valley of Mexico by A.D.1325. For nearly two hundred years, the Aztec Empire consisted of Aztec nobility who lived in the capitol at the site of today’s Mexico City and the conquered outlying towns, from which they extracted enormous quantities of tribute, including textiles. Aztec domination of Mesoamerica ended in 1519, after Spanish conquest.10 Spinning in the Codex Mendoza The Codex Mendoza can be read for its references to spinning thanks to the four volumes in the University of California Press facsimile edition with its English translations and scholarly discussion of the contents of the original book. Volume 1 of the University of California Press edition contains interpretation of different aspects and themes of the Mendoza, including extensive analyses of costume, glyphic traditions, and maps that delineate conquered regions according to the tribute paid to Aztec nobility. Volume 1 also includes appendices that organize information about such topics as tribute, name glyphs, and warrior costumes. Volume 2 provides descriptive meanings and ethnographic data about each pictorial glyph related to sixteenth-century Aztec life. Volume 3 is the page- by-page facsimile printed from transparencies of direct photographs of the original Codex Mendoza. Volume 4 contains a line drawing replica of each page, with English translation of the Spanish commentaries.11 The first reference to spinning appears on folio 57. At a baby girl’s bathing and naming ritual, just four days after her birth, a midwife introduced spinning tools. The midwife bathed the infant, gave her a name, and then handed her to her mother. For a baby girl, “the symbol they gave her was a distaff with its spindle and its basket, and a broom, which were the things she would use when she grew up.”12 A baby boy was given a symbol that represented his father’s occupation, which might be warrior, carpenter, featherworker, goldsmith, or scribe.13 Interestingly, the Spanish annotation includes “distaff” among the names for spinning tools, but the glyph depicts only the spindle, cotton, and workbasket. Perhaps the Spanish annotator recalled the term distaff familiar to European spinning traditions.14 The Mendoza dedicates three full pages to Aztec methods of raising children. Page 58 shows instructions from ages three to six years, page 59 shows ages seven to ten years, and page 60 shows ages eleven to fourteen. The Aztecs considered a fifteen-year-old girl ready for marriage, and page 68 shows the 10 P. Westheim. “History of the Ancient Mexican Civilizations,” in Ciba Review, 70 (1948): 2554-2562. 11 Frances F. Berdan. The Codex Mendoza, ed. Frances F. Berdan and Patricia R. Anawalt, vol 1 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1992), xiii-xiv. 12 Ibid., vol 4, 118. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 119-125, 141. young bride in one role, spinner. Throughout these years, fathers are shown teaching their sons a variety of skills and activities that include gathering firewood, gathering spilled grain in the marketplace, collecting bulrushes in canoes, and fishing with nets.15 The mother of a three-year-old daughter simply talks to her and gives her good advice, but she does not introduce her to spinning implements.
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